


Don't leave me

by WahlBuilder



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 13:37:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3652338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love story of an Astartes and Remembrancer during the Heresy-era.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't leave me

He ran out of books, printed ones, because he liked the feeling of them and the smell, and he went to the Remembrancers’ place, and they pointed at the “young and gifted poet”, small, so young and so small, with freckles and curly hair, and the poet was trembling like a small bird and couldn’t utter a word.

He went again the next day, out of armour, awkward, too big for the Remembrancers’ place, offered to go somewhere else, where he could fit, and they went to the observatory, and standing there, he heard the bird’s name at last.

Poetry, history, books, the bird brought his own poems and read them aloud and glowed, and glowed.

He went on a mission, and his brothers chuckled because they saw that he was falling without a jump pack and couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop.

Sweet pastries — he never tasted anything so sweet in his life, and a small hand in his own paw, his face heating up when the bird asked to draw him, his brothers’ smiles, and they all wanted to meet “his Remembrancer”. The first kiss — he had to bend down, and be careful, so careful, mindful of the fragility, even if everything in him quivered.

Mission, he hadn’t seen him for days, slips of parchment and paper handed him by servitors, poetry written in small flowery handwriting, he put it on his armour and made oaths to return.

A woman and a man of noble blood, he couldn’t remember their faces, everything red, his brothers holding him, his own voice, a roar, a thunder, when they said their son—  _his bird_  was a fool and that their relationship was a joke and disgusting.

The bird trembling in his hands, rejected by his blood, and he said, “The Imperium will remember your poetry and your drawings, and will forget your parents.”

Another mission, he was still angry, reckless, and even someone wearing the Terminator armour can be hurt, oblivion, then a voice calling him, small face, worried, worried, small hand on his paw, “Don’t leave me,” — “I won’t,” — and he asked but couldn’t hear the answer, slipping into oblivion.

Abaddon’s laughing eyes, when he woke up with warm presence at his side, and “You can’t afford dying,” and “In case you didn’t hear, he said ‘yes’”, and he was ready to jump to his feet, injuries forgotten, and Abaddon laughed, glorious,  _brother_ , “You both need sleep, leave the rest to us.”

The gathering, brothers, friends, his father’s unmistakable presence, but everything obscured, ovewhelmed by the small figure, vows, tiny palms in his paws, he had to be mindful of his strength and the fragility, drinking his blood, rage at his parents again, but then no more, “Mine, only mine,” that was enough, enough…

Then — darkness.

The look in the dark eyes of his Captain, Abaddon not the brother he had known anymore, and dry snap of fragile bones. The bird broken.

Grief without end.

Cavity in his chest.

He checked himself over and over, and couldn’t see it, but it was there.  _It was there._

No more poetry, no more names, turning into a weapon, loyal together to the old vows and honour and the Legion, with brothers, nothing else left, betrayed but still not broken, still, until the end. Until the end.

Old poetry of crumbling cities, he thought it couldn’t be, an old word with renewed meaning,  _hell_ , brothers rotting, screaming,  _am I already dead?_

Crumbling, pain withouth relief, rotting, falling apart.  
Dying.  
Dying.  
Shifting aches, ashes, ashes.  
No air in the melted lungs — and still a struggle.

A name.

” _Lucien_ …”  
….  
…  
..

_"Cassius?"_

_Don’t leave me again._


End file.
